Learn How to be a Drug Dealer Via Facebook's 'Weeds Social Club' Game

So you want to be a weed dealer? You could try to open a shop in L.A. (good luck, following the city's crackdown). And there's always the sidewalk on Alvarado Street in MacArthur Park (if you don't get shot by rivals first).

But maybe the most trouble-free way to become a homegrown slanger of fine cannabis is to practice doing it online. No LAPD raids. No gangsters shooting you. And no getting high on your own supply.

The geniuses at Showtime have come up with just such an avenue:

The Weeds Social Club, a virtual game on Facebook that lets you plant seeds, grow buds, harvest and wholesale to your favorite douche.

The release of the game, now in beta, coincides with the new summer of season of Weeds, the show about a pot-dealing mom, which debuted last night.

Users buy and plant different strains of marijuana--from downmarket "Schwag Weed" to the pricier and more (virtually) potent "Jamaican Ganja"--and then harvest the crop before it withers. Players then set prices above or below street value, determine how much customer risk they're willing to take, and wait for a hooded-sweatshirt-wearing dealer--really--to swing by and pick up the goods. Along the way, users barter with friends, outfit their pad with flat-screen TVs, bongs, and other digital accessories, and spend real money on "favors"--game points that let them buy nicer goods.

The DEA must be thrilled.

One commenter on the Weeds Social Club's Facebook page, Francisco Sagrero of Mexico, writes:

What the hell you guys think you're doing! There's people dying because of drugs in my country (MEX) and it is not because we have a violent president but for you because with "Weeds Social Club" you try to make look funny something who is not funny at all for all the families of each of the 40,000 who are death now because of the drugs!

Shame on you!

But, hey, this is great practice for the kid down the street who you know isn't going to college. And, heck, he was headed this way anyway, right?